Speaker biographies

Leon Aron is a resident scholar and director of Russian studies at AEI. He is the author of the first full-scale scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Since 1998, he has written Russian Outlook, a quarterly essay on economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition, published by AEI. He has contributed numerous essays and articles to newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Times (London), Newsday, The National Interest, Post-Soviet Affairs, and the Times Literary Supplement. A frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, he has commented on Russian affairs on 60 Minutes, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, CNN International, C-Span, and NPR’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation.

William Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, the leading international asset management firm specializing in Russian equities. The firm’s clients include high net-worth individuals and major financial institutions. Hermitage Capital Management currently has $4 billion invested in Russia. Under Mr. Browder’s leadership, the Hermitage Fund has been ranked the world’s best performing emerging markets fund over a five-year period by Nelsons (1996–2001). The Hermitage Fund was also named the best performing fund in the world by Micropal (1997) and the best Russian fund by Lipper (1997–98). Mr. Browder’s position on corporate governance practices in Russia has made him a leading shareholder rights activist and outspoken fighter for better corporate governance. He has been credited for a number of breakthroughs in improving corporate standards at major Russian companies, including Unified Energy Systems and Gazprom. He also spearheaded radical changes in Russian corporate law, which resulted in preemptive rights being granted to minority shareholders in all Russian companies. Mr. Browder serves as chairman of the Russia Task Force for the Institute of International Finance, Inc., and is a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/World Bank roundtable on corporate governance in Russia. He was named a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2001. Mr. Browder is a regular speaker on Bloomberg and CNBC and at Euromoney conferences, and serves as an  expert on Russia to the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Marco Fantini has worked as an economist with the executive arm of the European Union since 1994. From 1999 to 2004, he was responsible for Russia at the EU Department for Economic and Financial Affairs, and was secretary of the EU-Russia Subcommittee for Economics and Finance, an official bilateral forum. In this position, he was also charged with relations with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Mr. Fantini has published several works on the Russian economy, EU-Russia relations, and EU policy for eastern Europe and the Caucasus. He has contributed to the recent special issue on Russia for the Italian Geopolitical Review. His latest projects include a chapter on trade in a collection of essays on EU-Russia relations, "Russia And Europe in the Twenty-first Century: An Uneasy Partnership,"  (Anthem Press, edited by G. Timmins and J. Gower, foreword by Lord Robertson), and a scholarly article ("The EU Neighborhood Policy: Implications for Economic Growth and Stability"), in the Journal of Common Market Studies, both due to be published in London this summer.

Clifford Gaddy is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He is the coauthor, with Fiona Hill, of The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia out in the Cold (Brookings Press, 2003), a study of how territorial misallocation of industry and people burdens today’s Russian economy. His earlier books include Russia’s Virtual Economy (with Barry W. Ickes), which analyzes the nature and evolution of the post-communist economic system in Russia; The Price of the Past: Russia’s Struggle with the Legacy of a Militarized Economy; and Open for Business: Russia’s Return to the Global Economy (with Ed A. Hewett). His current research projects are “The ‘Higher Police’: Continuity, Power, and Program of the Russian Intelligence Elite”; “Poverty as Policy: Economics and Governance in Post-Soviet Central Asia”; and “The Economic Consequences of the GULAG.”

Thomas Graham currently serves as special assistant to the president of the United States and senior director for Russian affairs. Previously, he served as director for Russian affairs, beginning in June 2002. From August 2001 until May 2002, Mr. Graham served as the associate director of the policy planning staff of the Department of State. From 1998 until 2001, he was a senior associate in the Russia/Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Graham served as a foreign service officer from 1984 until 1998. His assignments included two tours of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he served as head of the political/internal unit and acting political counselor. Between tours in Moscow, he worked on Russian and Soviet affairs on the policy planning staff of the Department of State and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Vladimir Milov is president of the Institute of Energy Policy, one of Russia’s leading independent research institutions devoted to the study of strategic trends and challenges faced by the Russian energy sector and their international implications. From 1997–2001, he was employed at the Federal Energy Commission of Russia, the country’s natural monopoly regulator, and from 1999–2001 headed its economic analysis department. In December 2001, following his proposal for power sector reform legislation, Mr. Milov was appointed adviser to the minister of energy of the Russian Federation. In May–October 2002, Mr. Milov served as deputy minister of energy of the Russian Federation, with responsibilities for the management of structural reforms within the Russian energy sector, privatization, and the development of the National Energy Strategy. Mr. Milov is a frequent contributor to some of the most respected Russian business periodicals, including Vedomosti and Business Week Russia, and periodically writes for the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.

Julia Nanay is senior director at PFC Energy and heads the Russia and Caspian Service, where she provides clients with risk analyses for investments in the oil and gas industry. Ms. Nanay has been with PFC Energy since the firm was founded in 1985. She has worked with PFC Energy clients on all aspects of their investment strategies in this region and is familiar with the political, economic, and oil and gas sector issues. Ms. Nanay has over two decades of work experience in the oil and gas business. Prior to joining PFC Energy, she was a vice president of a Jacksonville-based oil refining/marketing concern, the Charter Oil Company. She was also assistant to the vice president for international affairs of a Boston-based oil marketing company, Northeast Petroleum Industries.

Andrey Ryabov is scholar-in-residence and program co-chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow, and chief editor of World Economy and International Relations, a journal published by the Russian Academy of Science. From 1993 to 2002, Mr. Ryabov was a senior researcher and then deputy director at the Center for Political Science Programs at the Gorbachev Foundation. He has coauthored and contributed to several books on contemporary Russian politics and society, including Formation of a Political Party System in Russia (Carnegie Moscow Center, 1998), The Evolution of the Multiparty System (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform (Carnegie Endowment, 2004). Mr. Ryabov is a frequent contributor to influential Russian media outlets, including Gazeta, Novaya Gazeta, Izvestiya, and Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

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